Rhein-Main Universitäten (RMU)

Nearly five years have passed since the launch of the RMU bachelor’s program “African Languages, Media, and Communication.” Since the 2021/22 winter semester, students have been able to attend courses at both Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and Goethe University Frankfurt. Launched during the pandemic, the program quickly gained traction. “Today I can no longer tell you the names of all the students,” says Frankfurt-based African Studies professor Axel Fanego Palat, before adding that “this alone speaks volumes.” Focused on modern Africa, the program addresses questions like: How do multilingual Africans communicate within the European diaspora? What role does social media play on a continent with a strong oral tradition? Together with Mainz-based African Studies scholar Prof. Nico Nassenstein, Fanego Palat designed a program aimed at providing graduates with strong career opportunities and a solid linguistic foundation.

Modern Africa was also the focus of the recent excursion to Kenya, organized and led by Axel Fanego Palat, Dr. Julia Schwarz (both Goethe University Frankfurt), and Dr. Holger Tröbs (JGU Mainz). Using their accommodation in a northern district of Mombasa as a base, students mapped the city’s linguistic and cultural landscape; they visited the Kaya Mudzimuvya Sacred Forest and the museum dedicated to missionary Ludwig Krapf, who conducted linguistic research on Swahili and local Bantu languages in the 19th century. The highlight of the trip was the students’ research projects (see below), which required participants to navigate independently – guided by the accompanying team and supported by local Kenyan contacts.

“For many, this was their first field experience in Africa. We hope this experience gave them a strong start in a research field that can initially feel a bit intimidating,” says Fanego Palat. At the end of each day, the group came together to discuss and reflect on their experiences. Exploring unfamiliar neighborhoods in Mombasa on skateboards, capturing the outskirts of the city through photography, or conducting interviews with locals all required a certain level of courage, the Africanist explains, adding that “the students were fantastic.” Not all four students who joined the Kenya trip are enrolled in the RMU program, which is currently undergoing reaccreditation and expected to be offered in a slightly modified form starting in the 2027/28 winter semester. The Frankfurt bachelor’s program “Empirical Linguistics with a Focus on African Linguistics” and the master’s program “Language and Society in Africa” were also represented.

Hendrik Leyser and his skateboard are inseparable. In his free time, he’s always out and about with it. But does Mombasa also have a skateboarding scene? This question drove the 31-year-old master’s student – and he made it the subject of his student research project. Weeks before his trip, he began his literature search and connected with a skateboarder in Mombasa through social media. With his skateboard packed, the young ethnologist and linguist looked forward to his first meeting. One of the four men he got to know in the coastal city had studied in Brandenburg, which immediately created a sense of familiarity. “Yo, man” – hanging out together after skating almost felt like being back home. But Hendrik didn’t lose sight of his academic mission: after their meetups, he wrote memory logs and conducted semi-structured interviews with the group. Before long, he realized that the conditions for skateboarders in Kenya are hardly comparable to those in Germany. Skateboarding is considered a niche sport, and there’s a lack of infrastructure and stores. In this sense, Hendrik Leyser may have witnessed a community just beginning to take shape. He’s considering expanding his ethnolinguistic study into his master’s thesis, which focuses on the use of different languages: Which target group is addressed in which language? What kind of prestige is associated with each language?

Martin Kostov is studying African studies as his major and Slavic studies as his minor. He has a passion for languages and couldn’t get enough of them even as a school student. After English, French, and Russian, Swahili is “something different” for him, and he’s glad that the cross-campus program allows him to study it continuously for four semesters. He is particularly fascinated by the way Kenyans learn languages: “They learn very visually, but also through YouTube and from tourists and trade partners.” Using interviews, Martin Kostov created language portraits: on a sheet with the silhouette of a human body, he had his interviewees note the languages they speak and their functions, using colors as well. “In some cases, English was placed at the head. This language is very dominant in Kenya. And people need to learn it because Kenya is very international,” he explains. For other interviewees, the head apparently had a different symbolism, and they chose different colors, too: “What was fascinating was that each person interviewed clearly had a unique relationship with the various languages.” Many Kenyans speak one or two local Bantu languages from the Mijikenda group in addition to Swahili and English, but often also French, German, Polish, and Italian. Martin Kostov has great respect for the linguistic diversity of Kenyans and is already looking forward to analyzing the sketches for his final report.

Jan Gengenbach took the most photos among the trip participants. This was part of his project on “Linguistic Landscapes,” which examines written language in public spaces. Street signs, billboards, warning labels on electrical boxes, graffiti – as well as the design of restaurants, shops, and markets – he captured over 600 images, which now need to be analyzed. The focus is on the use of different languages: Which target group is addressed with which language? What prestige is associated with each language? What is the relationship between language and typography? And how are loanwords handled when they follow a different grammar? Jan Gengenbach, who taught himself Greek at the age of ten using a PONS dictionary, discovered his passion for empirical linguistics after studying tourism. With his camera in hand, he spent hours exploring the streets of Mombasa. It was no surprise to find English and Swahili on public signs. However, he hadn’t expected to encounter Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese characters. The 28-year-old student sought to work as impartially as possible. Still, patterns quickly began to emerge: for example, Swahili is used to market repair services, while new products are advertised in English. Native-language communication, it seems, doesn’t take place in writing – it appears to be reserved for spoken interactions.

Robert Schneider is a fan of FC Kaiserslautern and plays soccer for a club in Sossenheim. Soccer and language – this is the topic he has chosen for his teaching research. He already gained experience with soccer in Africa during a volunteer service in Zanzibar (Tanzania), where he helped with free soccer training sessions for children. There, he witnessed the locals’ enthusiasm for soccer firsthand: “Every fan has two teams. In addition to the local soccer team, their hearts also beat for one of the major European clubs,” explains the 25-year-old, who is in the fourth semester of the RMU bachelor’s program. In Kenya, on the other hand, people are especially passionate about British clubs. A local contact introduced Robert Schneider to two of his friends, who were willing to be interviewed. Transcribing ten minutes of Swahili was hard work, Schneider recalls: “For one minute of interview, I spent an hour transcribing.” The three men, each a fan of a different team, talked about the previous weekend’s matches and why African players perform worse in their national teams compared to European leagues. All of this was interesting, but Robert Schneider finds it even more fascinating how grammar is handled with the many loanwords from English soccer terminology. However, his biggest takeaway was this: field research takes time – a lot of time.